Most people who have been following Nigerian news with any degree of closeness would have heard one of the various government pronouncements about our power situation. For those of you that haven't, our much maligned Federal Government has stated categorically that 6000MW of power will be available in Nigeria as at December 2009. As a point of reference on a good day (which is rare these days) Nigeria generates 3000MW. However these days we are hovering between 1000MW and 1500 MW, which is not good.

Everyone I have talked to with some semblance of knowledge about the sector has said that it is basically impossible for reasons almost squarely related to gas infrastructure (there are some transmission issues but lets leave those for now). Based on all this I actually thought that the government would issue a cop out in the following way

"We have succeeded in increasing our working capacity to 6000MW as we promised, but alas there is no gas"

However I read one of the random government pronouncers say that the government will generate, transmit and distribute 6000MW.

Now you would think that I would be cheered by such a strong statement of intent. After all the government would not want to end up with egg on its face after so many public pronouncements... The is a strong credibility issue here... the government will move heaven and earth to deliver because the consequences for failure would be massive...

You get the point.

Now dear readers that my explanation will no longer hold due to this recent overpromising, what do you suggest would be a plausible excuse if we fail to achieve the 6000MW target?